9/22/2009 @ 6:00PM

Eyeglasses For The Poor

Eyeglasses are as old as the Renaissance, but even now we still need trained professionals to fit them. That’s no problem for the Western world, which has around one optometrist for roughly every 10,000 people. But it’s a nightmare for developing countries. In sub-Saharan Africa, for example, there’s only one optometrist for around 1 million people.

The solution, according to retired Oxford University physicist Josh Silver, is a neat pair of self-adjustable specs that obviates the need for white-coated experts–and he wants to bring them to 1 billion people by 2020.

Silver’s so-called “Adspecs” use liquid-filled lenses that can be adjusted using syringes and then locked. Silver says the basic fluid-filled lens concept is not new and that “there must be hundreds” of patents taken out on such lenses since their first scientific mention in 1747. But the real revolution lays in tweaking the concept to make it fit the purpose of “self-refraction,” or allowing the wearer to set his or her own prescription using a simple eye test. After successful results on his own vision, Silver asked himself: “Could others do it?”

Silver’s research shows that others can indeed do it, as long as they do not suffer from significant astigmatism, which comes from an irregular curvature within the eye itself. It is also not yet known whether children can self-prescribe since they “have a wide range of accommodation It’s not easy to find their refraction, even in the developed world.” But the vast majority of adults can pick up the trick. After field trials in Africa testing 213 adults with his glasses, Silver found that over 80% obtained at least the minimum vision requirement of a truck or bus driver in Britain.

The next challenge, according to Silver, who heads up the Centre for Vision in the Developing World in Oxford, will be finding the necessary funding to bring down production costs and to meet the target to have a billion people wearing the glasses they need by 202. The sum could be significant, although he is cagey about giving out a precise figure.

But, by way of comparison, a modern factory producing disposable contact lenses in very large volumes can cost many tens of millions of dollars. Silver’s motivation is not commercial, he says, “I just really want to see those billion people wearing eyeglasses they need by the year 2020.”